The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Beating Stress & Improving Productivity

Stress can have adverse impacts on every aspect of your life, including lifestyle, eating habits and performance at work or in school.

Prolonged, chronic stress can put you at an increased risk of serious physical and emotional complications including depression and other psychiatric illnesses. When you are stressed, certain glands located on top of your kidneys produce a slew of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol (the main stress hormone). The surge in hormone production increases your heart rate, blood sugar, and blood pressure.

The Cascades of events take place affecting a number of body functions including digestion, reproduction, and immune systems.

Effects of Stress

Stress affects several body functions like how to respond to threats by directing your energy to the fight-or-flight response. Once your threat disappears, hormonal levels go back to normal, allowing you to relax.

Nevertheless, if stress doesn’t let up, you may not feel relieved, and your blood pressure may remain high and your bodily systems suppressed. If unmanaged stress puts you at an increased risk of several diseases and conditions.

Dealing with Stress

You can manage your stress levels by healthy eating, making lifestyle changes, and engaging in regular workouts among others. But can stress can be beneficial in one way or the other?

Yes. Stress is of great importance in keeping you motivated to complete tasks right on time. It has been demonstrated that working in a stressful environment can improve your productivity and performance. However, there is an ideal level of stress that can keep you on the go because too much of it can wreck your nerves and decrease your productivity or performance.

Here are some money saving ideas to deal with stress and improve your lifestyle and eating habits:

#1 Head to Work on Time

If you live in a congested city, you may find yourself arriving at your workplace late. You might not be in a position to accomplish all tasks on time.

The best way to avoid such mishaps is to arrive before everyone else does. You won’t have to spend much of your time in traffic. Being on time will give you more time to get all tasks completed accordingly. Sitting in traffic for the better part of the morning can be frustrating and may rob you the energy to keep moving until the end of the day.

#2 Plan Your Day the Night Before

Planning your day the night before is a game changer.

You are only required to spend about 15 minutes before you retire to bed the night before drafting your to-do list and making priorities. This enables you to have a head start on your day by the time the morning rolls around. Once you are through in creating your to-do list, select the most important tasks and mark them so that you will remember which tasks need to be completed first in the push towards your goals.

#3 Leave Your Office for Lunch

This can sound to be of little significance, but has a powerful effect on how you will work for the rest of the day. Getting out of your office during a lunch break can help ease stress levels, get you refreshed and keep you more focused once you are back to work.

Eating healthy meals that are well balanced during lunchtime will keep you re-energized once you resume working. If you have catering arrangements at your workplace, taking short walks can clear your head as you figure out the way the rest of your day should go.

#4 Avoid Distractions

We are living in a busy world, and distractions are inevitable. If you work on a computer, you might get tempted to check what is happening in your social media. You can’t ignore voice calls or texts on your cell phone. New emails may pop up, and you can’t resist the urge to check what is cooking.

Commit to complete your tasks before allowing these distractions from stealing your attention. Close the door to your office and put “do not disturb” sign such that your workmates won’t come bothering you. Sign out of social media and email accounts as well. If you prefer, diverts your phone calls to voice mail and attend to them later after you are done.

Your ability to minimize distractions will have positive impacts on your productivity.

#5 Keep Focus on Your Goals

Once you draft your goals, the best way to work towards their realization is staying focused.

You can keep your goals in a notebook or your phone diary so that you will have a look at them every time you want. Glancing regularly at your goals will keep you motivated all day.

Conclusion

If you can overcome stress, you are in the right direction towards increasing your productivity, getting promoted and making bigger earnings. You will find tasks become easier and have more time for other important things to improve your quality of life. An effort in the fight against stress is a big stride towards the realization of bigger and more rewarding challenges later in life. Fight stress before it knocks you down!

About our guest author:

Evlin Symon is a health writer from New Jersey. She enjoys learning about a wide variety of wellness issues and staying up-to-date on the latest research. She is also a regular contributor of many active blogs. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter.